Excerpt from Peeps at Royal Palaces of Great Britain Scarcely anything remains to-day to remind us of the vast size and the magnificence of the Palace of West minster, the royal residence of the English Kings from the time of Edward the Confessor until the reign of Henry VIII. For five centuries the monarchs of Eng land kept their Court on the island of Thorney, within the sound of the bells of the great minster raised by the piety of the saintly Edward. Though the early Kings were seldom long in one place, they regarded Westminster as their principal palace, and often kept their Christmas festivals there, a time of general feasting at the royal expense. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.